Pete Soper <psoper@encore.com> Said:
Hi Folks,
I'm finally moving the station from a second floor room, have
built a ground window in the new location and have a pretty clear
idea of handling everything except balanced feeders. ...
... Apart from switching the feeders to ground when not in use,
which I of course intend to do, do I have any options to provide
some protection from a surprise strike?
Back when I used a ladder-line feed with a tuner in the shack, I had a HECK
OF A LOT OF NOISE FROM THE COMPUTER in the shack.
Now I am using a coax feed (full-shielded 9913) all the way from an outside
switching box, and have eliminated 99.99% of my noise. Apparently the
AL-1200 amp and ICOM 751 rig are well shielded. I also have a Nye Viking
MB-IV antenna matcher that lets so much of the noise in that I took it out
of the line and don't use it anymore. I have enough space and tall pine
trees that I can put up separate "stealth" dipoles for each band (no towers
here), so I don't really need a matcher, anyway. The outside switching box
uses 3 relays and lets me select any of 7 antennas (plus grounding them when
power off).
I had a probable direct lightning strike a few years ago that actually
melted my stranded copperweld 80 m dipole (most was vaporized, a few
sections dropped to the ground all fused and twisted - still got one for
display). Of course it took out most of the station equipment directly
connected to it (this was before the homebrew grounding relay box was
installed), and even damaged some of the house wiring.
After discovering how to eliminate the noise by dumping the ladder line, I
would not go back to that system unless I could move the antenna matching
unit well outside the house and operate it remotely or automatically.
And it is nice to know that if a storm comes up unexpectedly I have very
little to worry about from lightning.
Jerry Flanders W4UKU flanders@groupz.net
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